1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital image processing technique, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for automatic mass segmentation based on dynamic programming.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mass segmentation plays a crucial role in diagnosis of medical problems of breasts or other tissues. Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems are well known for classification of suspicious regions as normal, benign, or malignant. An important feature in CAD algorithms is the segmentation of tissue masses and finding an accurate contour of a suspected mass. Currently, there are two algorithms for automatic mass segmentation: region growing and discrete contour model.
An example of a region growing algorithm includes assigning each pixel to a particular region. However, one of the problems of region growing algorithm is that it makes unnecessary small and low-contrast structures as part of the suspected mass. Thus, the region growing algorithm may fail to produce an accurate closed contour of the mass and the resulting segmentation may become too large.
The discrete contour model algorithm attempted to solve the problem of region growing algorithm by building a deformable contour of the suspected mass. The main drawback of using the discrete contour model is that the algorithm requires an initial estimate of the contour that is close to the actual boundary of the mass. As a result, the algorithm may fail to find an actual contour of the suspected mass and may find the contour of other unsuspected masses.
Disclosed embodiments of this application address these and other issues by using a dynamic programming algorithm that provides an accurate and closed contour of a suspected mass.